A picture I grew up with

I grew up with this picture on the sitting-room wall of my boyhood home in Ashbourne. A few weeks ago I noticed that it had a very 'dingy' appearance and I decided to take it out of its frame, scan it and brighten it a little. It required almost no manipulation; the problem being that over all those years the glass had darkened. When I actually examined the piece of card I found that it was a reproduction of a painting (amazing ain't it?) used to advertise Offler's beer. The scanned print is now in front and the original at the rear.

A much warmer and wetter day. Things will soon start growing. Apparently many daffodil-festivals have been cancelled due to the lack of daffodils. When John was born (28th March) it was a toss-up whether or not a daffodil in the garden flowered before he arrived. The daffodil won but only by 24hrs; so late daffs are nothing new.

Much of my day has been spent trying to download some sprites from Ray, for use in WisePixel etc. Got there in the end but I have such a lot to learn. I had an email from Pete (Manxislander) telling me that his picture of the Pier at Ramsey, which I had thought was a panorama, in fact wasn't. He had manipulated it to shape. It cetainly fooled me!!

I had a nap in the afternoon, again, but I had been up very early i.e. shower-before-5am sort of early. Exchanged emails with Bob and his, and my, gmail problems seem to have sorted themselves. These things mostly do. Even my 'lead-picture' was fairly painless today. One does have to patient with Blogger though. I'm only talking seconds-rather-than-milliseconds. But it does seem slow. It would be unlike Google to leave a problem hanging about for long; they are far too canny for that.

My earlier quote, of the streetcry about stew 'seven days in the pot' reminded Bob of a similar one -'pease pudding hot / pease pudding cold / pease pudding in the pot / nine days old.' It's a wonder they didn't die of food-poisoning. Maybe lots of them did ! It might work out OK for Bob to join me on my Holbeach break - we shall just have to wait and see.

In Iraq the 74yr old hostage Norman Kember has been freed by coalition forces, led by the SAS. Good for them.